


Damage and Daiquiris

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Genderswap, a bit -- not everyone., also actually post-movie, and it's really just about the twisted fluffy feels so, bad rationalisations of physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of Lady Loki's attempt to take over Earth, she and Thor are living at Stark Tower with the other Avengers. fem!Tony finds her in the kitchen -- alone, despite house rules that Thor is always supposed to be watching her -- and makes her a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damage and Daiquiris

“All right, who’s banging the baby-sitter?” Tony asked loudly as she walked into the kitchen. “There are conditions, you know, to you guys living here. Pretty big contract, actually, and I distinctly remember it beginning and ending with no one leaving you unattended.” 

Loki slowly looked up from her book.

“On account of you trying to hijack my power systems and destroy the entire city.” 

She blinked.

“Kind of a big deal. To me, at least.” Tony pulled open the fridge door. “I love New York.” 

Loki didn’t answer. 

In her experience — her incarceration, actually — at Stark Tower, she had learned a great deal about the mechanics of human interaction. It was Thor’s suggestion — that her punishment for attempting to overthrow the human rule of Midgard and claim it as her own would be to live among the people she sought to subjugate. 

Thor seemed to think that was clever, rather than cruel. 

Thor was an idiot.

Loki had learned much of how humans communicated with one another. She understood the speech, and the euphemisms. Tony, for example, enjoyed frequent references to popular culture, word play, and sex. She had even begun to comprehend some of the more subtle actions. In truth, it hardly differed from the world she had been poisoned with as a child. 

Asgard and Midgard — the two greatest realms of Yggdrasil, in Thor’s mind. 

She closed her book. 

Tony slid a strange, red concoction in a glass across the counter towards her. 

“Drink up, party crasher.” 

What Loki had yet to learn — and what Thor seemed most keen on her experiencing during her imprisonment — was the logic of humanity.

She sought and struggled to understand why they behaved as they did. There were base instincts, which she had happily exploited. But they hardly accounted for the full compendium of these wretched mortals’ actions. 

She was missing something. Something that did not amount to love or lust or languish. 

“It’s not poison, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tony told her, sipping an identical drink. “Look, it’s even frosty. Like you.” 

“What is?” Loki asked her suspiciously.

“Strawberry daiquiri. Personal favourite of mine.” 

Strawberry, Loki understood. Daiquiri, she did not.

Tony sighed. “Schnapps. Rum. Some lime for a kick — you know. Something you could use.” 

“It’s alcohol?” 

“Forsooth, comprehension!” Tony shouted. “Mead! Ale! Except it’s not either of those things. In fact, it’s much better, but—” 

“Why must you talk so floridly when there is no one present to impress?” Loki asked dryly, picking up the glass. She sniffed the daiquiri experimentally. There was an oddness to it — a certain element of nonsensicality that she found it difficult to ignore. 

The drink was made with ice. It was meant to be cold. And yet — it was a very vibrant shade of red. Its aroma was warm, and almost soothing. It reminded her of summers spent sprawled under the fruit trees on Asgard. She would read, and Thor would throw apples at the birds. 

It was absurd. 

“Why’d you have to take out your little teenage rebellion on my city?” Tony retorted. “We all have issues.” 

Loki took a sip.

“Although mine don’t usually kill people.” 

“Physics,” Loki answered, licking her lips disdainfully. She hated the spice of it. 

Tony stared at her. 

But — as Loki, and everyone who lived in the tower knew — Tony was not gifted at remaining quiet for very long.

“In what way?” she asked incredulously. 

Loki lifted the cup to her mouth again.

“No, really. Elaborate.” Tony put her own drink down and hopped onto the counter. The bar stools were on the other side, and frankly — 88 per cent of it was her building. Pepper could deal. “I think I know just a little bit about this stuff.” 

“How does it taste like fire?” Loki murmured, rotating the glass. 

“It’s called rum, Frosty. It’s Jamaican. How is science a valid justification for you tripping balls — I’ve seen the tape, by the way, of you at SHIELD headquarters, so don’t even try to pretend — and going every mass-murdering, evil dictator ever? Because that’s new. Usually they just say God. Or ‘because’. I, personally—” 

“Surely, you must realise I’m not listening.” 

“Well, clearly you are,” Tony replied with a slightly bitter smile. She picked up her drink again and took a much larger sip than she’d intended.

In the back of Tony’s mind, she could hear Steve asking: ‘Is everything a joke to you?’ 

Most things were. She found it hard to take anything seriously — cheeseburgers, of course, being her primary exception. But some things — some little, seemingly insignificant things such as using science as an excuse for murder…

She grinned into her drink as her temper flared. 

“My brother and Barton are on the roof,” Loki told her calmly, returning to the very first question Tony had asked. “They intend to challenge Heimdall to something called a ‘staring contest’.”

“Productive.”

It was evident that neither of them thought so. 

Tony slid off the counter. She felt strangely close to Thor in that moment. She had an overwhelming desire to hit something with a large, heavy hammer, and she knew it had everything to do with the time she’d spent talking to Loki. 

Luckily, she had a lab where she could do just that.

Maybe she’d modify one of her cars. Give it jet propulsion, or something, and take it to a circuit in Tokyo. Now that was productive. 

“Collateral damage,” Loki said, putting the empty drink down in the space Tony had vacated. 

Tony glanced over her shoulder. 

“The collision of two objects in space results in a large magnetic field, explosions of matter and energy, and detritus. Smaller items are drawn in, pulverised, and redistributed as flotsam.” 

“Except that people are not detritus,” Tony countered. “And you don’t qualify as an object in space, no matter how big your ego is. Believe me. I would know.” 

Loki picked up her book. According to the rules established in Tony’s contract, she wasn’t permitted to do any form of magic while on Midgard.

She made the book vanish with a delicate flick of her wrist.

Tony glanced away briefly and laughed. She raised her glass in a mocking salute and walked away as she called out to the tower’s AI: “JARVIS. Tell Thor his little sister needs a spanking. Not that I’m endorsing corporal punishment, and I’m about 94 per cent sure she’d actually enjoy it, but at least it’ll keep her out of my hair.” 

“Relaying the message, sir.” 

Loki watched Tony depart with a new, but subtle zeal.

She knew she’d hit a nerve. 

She wanted to hit it again.


End file.
